


Boy Blue

by filia_noctis



Category: The Charioteer - Mary Renault
Genre: Boarding School, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-12
Updated: 2014-12-12
Packaged: 2018-03-01 04:21:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2759444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/filia_noctis/pseuds/filia_noctis





	Boy Blue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Greer Watson (greerwatson)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/greerwatson/gifts).



You don’t write a letter, you don’t know what to write. And you see the letters coming back with discreet notes that make others stop writing too.

You light up your irreverent smoke and drag your feet. You think it is nonchalance. Your masters think it is transient (they aren’t wrong, but never entirely, not for some time). Your house fellows see the pucker in between your brows for what it is and tread carefully, more out of boyish sympathy than fear, as you will come to realise.

Your comrades—first enthusiastically, then half-heartedly—plan all manners of vengeful jests until somebody finds a crib in Hazell’s desk and Monty canes him. You insist on being a stickler for the number of licks prescribed (not as much as a touch more, you insist) as much for the beating itself. Your presence is required when it happens. House rules. But you can’t watch. The discomfort sits in the cold pit of your stomach. You are glad when it is over. You feel better, even lighter after some time, in your room.

Hazell is removed shortly. There is a wistful mourning in the dorms for all the wrong reasons. You shut them up. They obey.

Your cold, steeled hatred surprises you when you single-handedly soap the House Master’s stairwell’s top steps enough that he winds up with a broken hip and is thankfully away during the last few months of your stay. The loss of nail-chewing adrenaline and nerve-wrecked laughter in the face of cold purpose surprises you too. It will be the first of a handful. You cannot be incriminated. Nobody says anything (much). But there is a wagon’s worth of speculation while everybody covertly looks at you with eloquent eyes. You relish the new-found respect and slight dread you seem to evoke, but not enough. You don’t talk about it.

You are more than a little confused about the catharsis it all brings, more from the sense of judicious righteousness than the acts themselves. You are a little afraid (of) yourself. The fear prickles you for a few days, but you are too busy being unknotted and lightheaded to notice it much.

You will eventually get used to the empty half of the study. (You will always remember it as both full and empty, your memory slicing time in halves.) There are a couple more months to go, either way.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Thousandth Man](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2759156) by [toujours_nigel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/toujours_nigel/pseuds/toujours_nigel)




End file.
